


The Tear's Daughter // Filia Lacrymarum

by charychangeling



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, F/M, Mystery, The Great Lake | The Black Lake (Harry Potter), Water
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-01-31
Updated: 2021-01-31
Packaged: 2021-03-18 04:21:12
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,561
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29112225
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/charychangeling/pseuds/charychangeling
Summary: Astoria Greengrass’ first year in Hogwarts throws the shy young slytherin into a world of invisible resentment and hidden hostility, plunges her into an inner conflict between her own opinions and those of her family, one of the biggest pure-blood families in the United Kingdom. Her ancestry also results in an unsteady friendship with Draco Malfoy, that develops despite the general turmoil, even though untruths from both sides threaten to taint this fragile relationship, which starts to be less and less political and formal as time progresses. In the midst of the ominous rumble of an approaching war, Astoria tries to understand her identity and the strange gift she has been given, in a wizarding world, that is shattered by hatred. Gloomy dreams, overheard conversations, unearthly chanting and never known abilities send Astoria on an onerous search for the truth. But what does the Black Lake and a menacing, dark pair of eyes have to do with it? Will she be able to resist the call of the mysterious beings from below the surface?
Relationships: Astoria Greengrass/Draco Malfoy
Kudos: 4





	The Tear's Daughter // Filia Lacrymarum

**Author's Note:**

> Hello and welcome!  
> I’m really happy that you’ve somehow ended up here.  
> In the following short preface, I will summarize all the small organizational things, I want to say before the start of this story.  
> “The Tear’s daughter – Filia Lacrymarum” is my first Harry Potter fanfiction and the first one in general, that I will be publishing for other people to read. The story begins in Harry Potters third and Astoria Greengrass’ first year of school at Hogwarts and will, from there, follow more or less the course of the Harry Potter books and movies. I’ve really tried to not change the main plot too much or in some cases not at all. Instead, I’ve tried to give a character, who, in my personal opinion, didn’t get enough attention in the original work, a bit more personality and character development.  
> Moreover, I don’t think I have to add, that none of the featured characters belong to me and that I’ve just “borrowed” them for the sake of telling this small story.  
> I’m also really looking forward to feedback of all kind and I want to encourage you to tell me, if you like my story or have any questions or complaints. I’m already excited to read all your thoughts and reactions, regarding my story.  
> Finally, I want to mention, that English is not my first language. So please excuse any grammatical errors, that might pop up here and there, I will try to keep them at a minimum.  
> Well then! I hope that you’ll have as much fun reading and returning to the magical world as I had writing.  
> See you on the next page, on platform 9¾!  
> \- Alice

✶ **✶** ✶

**_○ It’s so mysterious, the land of tears. ○  
\- Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, The Little Prince_ **

_“A tear, shed in the moment of utter despair is of stronger might and magic than the oldest spell.”_

_“Verily, impossible.”_

_“Quite. But sometimes the impossible is the only way to explain the possible.”_

✶ **✶** ✶

**1\. Farewell - The Daughter's Tear**

Farewell.

Astoria thoughtfully ran her pale fingers over the cool pane of the train window, traced the streaks, the rain had left on the foggy glass. In the dim light the delicate blue veins on the back of her hand were clearly visible under the fair skin.

Her observant light green eyes were fixated on the hand of her mother, who was standing in her husband’s arms and waved the little white handkerchief, she was clutching in her hand. The white cloth was already fully soaked in rainwater, making it heavy and instead of fluttering through the air like it was supposed to be, it was simply lifted up by the movement and then slapped back against Astoria’s mother’s wrist like a soggy cleaning rag.

A strangely unsettling pulling sensation had nestled in her stomach in the shape of a small ball. A ball made up of fear, anticipation and the certain sorrow that comes over one, when he has to leave behind his loved ones for the first time.

Through her head, which the eleven-year-old had by now leaned against the cool window, still buzzed dozens of questions, which had been plaguing her since the departure from the family manor. Every question, that bounced off her skull like a rogue ping-pong-ball back into the maze, her mind currently was, triggered another arsenal of painful stings, that wound themselves through the entirety of her brain. Just to make her suffer.

Would her parents send her just as many owls as they had sent her big sister before her? Would she be sorted into the same house that her sister Daphne had already been sorted in and that she’d been raving on about since her first year? Would she have an advantage over the students, which didn’t come from magical families or would the teachers, on the contrary, expect outstanding achievements from her, that she wouldn’t be able to live up to? Had she really closed the door of the lizard cage in her room?

Last summer she had bought a family of salamanders in Diagon Alley and had kept the little creatures secretly under her bed. And they would have stayed secret, hadn’t one of the thirteen animals freed itself from its glass prison and built itself a nest under Daphne’s pillow. Well, maybe Astoria had helped the little animal out a little bit on its mission but she would’ve never admitted that in front of her parents. She had basically done it to upset them anyways, because Astoria’s mother and father had bought Daphne a racing broom at the beginning of the summer, while Astoria didn’t receive any such gift. She wouldn’t even have minded it (as she was already used to the favouritism her big sister received on the regular), hadn’t there always been Daphne’s gleeful face in her door frame every morning, shouting things like “First years aren’t allowed brooms anyways.” or “Professor Snape personally asked Flint to take me into this year’s quidditch team.” or “In my opinion you should join the chess club. Your clumsiness can’t to much harm there. Even though… now that I think about it…” All in all, Astoria’s reaction to the newest insult seemed pretty understandable to her.

And now that she thought about it, the spectacular escape of the – by now at least forty centimetres long – magical lizards with a following house flooding, which would give the house-elves a few days of work, didn’t sound that bad anymore.

Suddenly, the attention she was currently paying her constantly multiplying questions (which were soon joined by childish revenge fantasies and even a hint of malicious joy) was distracted by the train compartment door being opened with a thunder-like crash. It revealed a boy, who was probably a few years older than Astoria, standing in the passageway, casually leaning on one leg.

His white blond hair fell intentionally accidental in his pale face and almost fully covered his remarkably piercing blue eyes. He was wearing a shirt, which was even whiter than the reflection of his teeth in the train window, when he gave her an awkward smile. Near is collar, the tiny, skilful, green-silver embroidery of a snake evidently controlled by magic writhed in a small circle, trying to bite its own tail.

She didn’t like him from the first moment she laid eyes on him.

With a critical look at Astoria’s clothes - which consisted of an ankle-length, black-grey plaid skirt and a cream blouse, that would stay wrinkle-free even after the long train ride, thanks to her mother’s talented magic – the boy opened his thin lips and curled them into a smug grin.

“Slytherin?”

She shrugged, desperately trying to avoid a conversation with the stranger and hoping to prevent his company in her train compartment by fuelling his wish for conversation as little as possible. She wanted to keep her peace at all cost.

Suddenly, as if he’d just had an epiphany, the boy’s eyes widened, which, for the fraction of a second, made him look like a scared, white ferret.

“You’re Astoria Greengrass.”

Even though he pronounced it like a question, he didn’t seem to expect an answer from her. She nodded and gave him a forced smile, while trying to hide her uneasiness about the fact, that the boy somehow knew her name. She shifted her gaze and attention back on her parents again, who had by now engrossed in a conversation and weren’t looking in the direction of the train anymore. The stormy autumn wind blew the long, straight hair of Astoria’s mother across her tan face and painted thin black lines on it, which, from afar, almost looked like spiderwebs.

Astoria’s father gave a by passing wizard in official looking robes a regal smile, while he brushed a lock of his dark blond hair out of his face, that was just as tan as his wife’s. The wizard abruptly stopped, grabbed Astoria’s father’s hand and shook it enthusiastically. The stocky man immediately engaged him in a conversation, wavering his hands through the air, but the other wizard cut him off after a few moments with a quick movement of his hand, that was probably supposed to subconsciously signal his habit of looking down on others. Equally because of his tall stature and his social status. He used it often, when ministry staff or other business people visited the manor to negotiate with Mr. Greengrass.

“My father has told me about you.”, the blond boy continued languidly, without acknowledging Astoria’s obviously dwindling interest. “I know your sister.”

Slowly, Astoria turned her head around again.

“Draco Malfoy?”, she asked, already knowing the answer. In her head, the picture of a tall, proud man whose light blue eyes flashed menacingly from under his long, always flawlessly combed, white blond hair that fell over his shoulders, while talking about the remarkable successes his son had already achieved while at Hogwarts.

Said son was now standing in front of her, unmistakeably Lucious Malfoy’s kid. The resemblance was uncanny and Astoria blamed her headache for not realizing it sooner: the same piercing blue eyes, the same almost white hair, the same pale complexion and the same, always high raised, pointy chin.

Draco Malfoy nodded proudly and smiled a little bit broader, as if the certainty, that Astoria knew him inflated his ego a little bit more. Well… given that that was still in the realm of the possible.

“Have you already heard it?”

His tone of voice was confident and a bit dragging. Like that of a lord, talking to his maid, or better a house-elf and Astoria had to swallow down the line of snappy comments which started to form on her tongue like big sugar marbles and for which’s pronunciation she could’ve never mustered up the courage. For her pending school-start at Hogwarts, she would finally have to lose the habit she had picked up in her primary school days, of always saying what was on her mind. Not only, because her father would otherwise send howler after howler in her dorm which would turn her into a leper in mere weeks, but also because she was smart enough to understand the high value of a lot of strategic friendships.

So, instead of saying what was on her mind, the girl didn’t say another word to Malfoy and simply resumed staring out of the window. She wasn’t practiced enough yet to fake interest and to be honest, she found it worse than lying.

The realization hit her like a hard but unsurprising punch in the stomach. She made the first shock responsible for her slight flinching, when she followed the gaze of her parents, that definitely hadn’t lasted on her for the last half hour. Both of her parents waved in the direction of Astoria’s sister who was currently sticking her long, dark blonde hair out of a window on the far right of the train and shouted something at the blond man and the black-haired woman on the train platform. She was probably making dozens of empty promises of perfect grades, the renunciation from any romances and endless letters that she would send them. Astoria was tired of watching the depressing scene and returned her attention (for a lack of better alternatives) back to Malfoy, who had been talking the whole time in his monotonous, bored voice.

“… nobody knows, how he did it, but it probably won’t take long until he’s going back to… Are you even listening to me?”

Astoria guiltily looked down at her hands, regarded the silvery shining ring, adorned with her family crest on the middle finger of her left hand. A pair of antlers, surrounded by ivy tendrils with a small, delicate lily in the middle. The Greengrasses were part of the “Sacred Twenty-Eight”. This title signified a purely magical family tree, which solely consisted of witches and wizards as long as it was traceable. Astoria remembered the dozens of times, her father had given her and her sister lectures about the importance of magical blood and, of course the pride, said blood contained.

Astoria tried to take in this pride, symbolized by the ring, raised her head and said with quiet, but certain tone:

“If it was really that important, I’m sure you won’t mind to say it again.”

Draco Malfoy seemed offended and visibly irritated by the fact, that somebody wasn’t listening to him, let alone possessed the audacity to ask him to repeat himself. For a short, blissful moment, he was struck by speech.

“Uhm…” He vigorously cleared his throat. “Sirius Black is on the loose. People say he’s after Harry Potter.”

A shiver ran down Astoria’s spine at the mention of the name “Sirius Black”. She had already seen dozens of “Wanted”-posters while she had last visited Diagon Alley with the bewitched portrait of a shabby looking man with long, greasy hair, that had to be held in the frame by several hands, as if he’d be able to flee from the withered parchment into the real world. Even on the walls of platform 9¾, flyers asked for useful hints and eyewitness reports, but apparently the ministry hadn’t received any so far, for they didn’t seem to have captured the rogue wizard yet. The name “Harry Potter” also caused her some uneasiness. But it was a different kind of discomfort. Maybe it displeased her that she didn’t know what exactly displeased her. It was, as if the name was as familiar to her, as the name of her sister, although she couldn’t remember ever having heard it before in her life.

“Who?”

“Well,” Malfoy cleared his throat again. This time more confidently than the last time. “Sirius Black is the…”

Astoria cut him off with a fast movement of his hand, that she had probably subconsciously copied from her father.

“I know, who Sirius Black is.” Again, she glued her gaze to the window pane, looked at the reflection of her light green eyes. She saw her parents laughing about something, her sister had just said.

“Who’s the other one?”, she asked, turning to face Malfoy again, trying to hide the twinge of hurt she’d just felt.

His eyes widened in shock and he wrinkled his nose, as if Astoria had just called the Dark Lord by name.

“You don’t know Harry Potter?”

Apparently, Astoria had just unknowingly committed a state felony.

“He’s brought down you-know-who.” Her curled his lips into a smile, that was probably supposed to look mysterious but instead only appeared a bit incredulous. “At least that’s what people say.”

The girl couldn’t make out which emotion covertly accompanied his last words. Fear? Impossible. Disappointment? Highly likely. But as fast as Malfoy had opened up to Astoria, he closed himself up again and denied her the clear answer she had hoped to find in his face. She nodded, which made her dark red locks bounce around her face like waves, swirling around a rock in the sea. The name of the most famous dark wizard of all time was indeed familiar to her. So that’s why she knew Potter’s name. She had to have picked it up from a conversation between her parents. Obviously, that must be it.

“Come on, Draco!”

A deep, slightly stupid but still intimidating sounding voice boomed from the background and broke through the tension, Draco Malfoy’s story had conjured up in the room and a bloated face squished itself, visibly struggling through the ajar door, that had apparently closed a few centimetres by itself during the conversation with Malfoy.

“Come on.”, said the voice again, which belonged to a tall, corpulent boy. Astoria fixated him and Malfoy with inquiringly squinted eyes. The presence of the white blond boy was more than enough disturbance of the peace in one compartment in Astoria’s opinion and she wouldn’t approve of it, if now his friend also decided to enter the small room.

“By the way, that’s Crabbe…”, Malfoy pointed at the boy, whose bulky figure almost took in the entire doorframe. “And Goyle.” He pointed at another boy behind Crabbe who was – despite his equally corpulent build – probably concealed by the athletic anatomy of his buddy and had been keeping out of Astoria’s field of view up until that moment.

Astoria prayed for him not to try to squeeze through the door as well and lock her into the narrow compartment with Malfoy that way.

“Good to know.”, she said, a bit cooler than intended, not losing a bit of her proud attitude.

“We’ll meet again.”, Malfoy promised with his confident smile, of which Astoria hoped against better knowledge, to never have to see it again. But the way it was looking right now and she would really be sorted into Slytherin, he’d probably be able to keep his promise.

“Us pure bloods have to stick together.”, Draco Malfoy noted while turning around to his henchmen.

“Yes.”, Astoria answered, her voice suddenly shaky, as the train puffingly set into motion and she uncertainly turned the ring on her middle finger. “We’ll probably have to.”


End file.
